Board games are  awesome. They have been around for quite some time, but have really come into their own over the last decade.  It seems that ever since Monopoly was invented, people  have deemed it unnecessary to innovate.

Well, that might be somewhat of an exaggeration, but really there weren’t too many new board games coming out that brought new ideas to the table (deliberate pun). There were a few really awesome ones before, but Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne really put board gaming as a hobby back into motion.

Life has been pretty busy over the last few months, which has meant precious little time for my usual activities (video games, reading up on crazy stuff on the net, updating this blog), but I have made some time for board games and I am stoked I that have. I am not exactly new to board games, but I have definitely had more of an interest in them over the last couple of months, and have acquired quite a number in that time. I will list a few of the top picks on the shelf with a brief explanation, though i will no doubt be looking at them a bit more closely over the next wee while as well as some of the other awesome games.

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is definitely one of my favorites. It is a game all about strategy and tactics, with almost no luck involved. That is a huge bonus to me as I have terrible luck. It last just over an hour, but it has plenty of scheming and plotting.  Its not the easiest game to learn, but that is largely due to its “different” turn structure. There are a few games with similar mechanics, but if you are relatively new to board games it’ll take you while to get your head around it.

“The players are plantation owners in Puerto Rico in the days when ships had sails. Growing up to five different kind of crops: Corn, Indigo, Coffee, Sugar and Tobacco, they must try to run their business more efficiently than their close competitors; growing crops and storing them efficiently, developing San Juan with useful buildings, deploying their colonists to best effect, selling crops at the right time, and most importantly, shipping their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit.

The game system lets players choose the order of the phases in each turn by allowing each player to choose a role from those remaining when it is their turn. No role can be selected twice in the same round. The player who selects the best roles to advance their position during the game will win.”

Agricola

Another favourite of mine is Agricola. Like Puerto Rico it is also a “worker placement” game.  However it does not share its simultaneous turn structure. That is to say during your turn you place one of your workers on an action, which means only you get to take that action for that round. The goal of the game is to build up your farm over 14 rounds. You only have so much time to build your farm and also feed your family, so things can get tough.  I haven’t played it a great deal as of yet, but I love it.

“In Agricola, you’re a farmer in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. On a turn, you get to take only two actions, one for you and one for the spouse, from all the possibilities you’ll find on a farm: collecting clay, wood, or stone; building fences; and so on. You might think about having kids in order to get more work accomplished, but first you need to expand your house. And what are you going to feed all the little rugrats?

The game supports many levels of complexity, mainly through the use (or non-use) of two of its main types of cards, Minor Improvements and Occupations. In the beginner’s version (called the Family Variant in the U.S. release), these cards are not used at all. For advanced play, the U.S. release includes three levels of both types of cards; Basic (E-deck), Interactive (I-deck), and Complex (K-deck), and the rulebook encourages players to experiment with the various decks and mixtures thereof. Aftermarket decks such as the Z-Deck and the L-Deck also exist.

Agricola is a turn-based game. There are 14 game turns plus 6 harvest phases (after turn 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14). Each player starts with two playing tokens (farmer and wife) and thus can take two actions per turn. There are multiple options, and while the game progresses, you’ll have more and more: first thing in a turn, a new action card is flipped over. Problem: Each action can be taken just once per turn, so it’s important to do some things with high preference. Each player also starts with a hand of 7  job cards (of more than 160 total) and 7 item cards (of more than 140 total) that he/she may use during the game if they fit in his/her strategy. Speaking of which, there are countless strategies, some depending on your card hand. Sometimes it’s a good choice to stay on course, and sometimes it is better to react to your opponents’ actions”

Race for the Galaxy

Race for the galaxy is one the latest  additions to by collection and is already rising to the top. It is tied in an odd way to Puerto Rico, in that it was initially intended to be a card based version of Puerto Rico. However the guy who designed Puerto Rico ended up making the official card game (San Juan) which meant Race for the Galaxy became it own thing.  It still shares a lot of the mechanics, and is in my mind a much better game than San Juan is. Because there is very little setup time and most actions are taken simultaneously, it is a pretty quick game.  However it is still a pretty deep game.  It has a nice combination of luck (random card draws) and strategy.  Also space is awesome.

“In Race for the Galaxy, players build galactic civilizations by game cards that represent worlds or technical and social developments.

Each turn each player chooses one action, but the others will share in the actions chosen, each player secretly and simultaneously chooses one of seven different action cards and then reveals it. Only the selected phases occur. For these phases, every player performs the phase’s action, while the selecting player(s) also get a bonus for that phase.”

I have also come across an awesome PC version that lets you play against some really tough AI players.  Very cool, and very free implementation. You can find it HERE.

Thurn and Taxis

In Thurn and Taxis you build postal routes through olden time Europe. It sounds boring I know, but its a really fungame. Its much simpler than any of the ones mentioned before, which means its one my wife will actually play with me. Shes not dumb, not by a long way, but in general I have found the females of this world tend to prefer games that are easier to get into straight away.  Guys tend to have more of a liking for more complex deeper gameplay that requires a bunch of thinking. Its a really fun game though and I like it quite a bit. It is also a really nice looking game which is a big plus ion my books.

“In Thurn & Taxis, players build post office routes across Bavaria and the regions around, collecting bonus points in various ways. The board shows a map of all the towns, with roads leading from each one to some of its neighbors. There are various colored regions around the board, most with one or two towns, and a large region with all the Bavarian towns in the center.

From a display of six city cards (or the top of the deck), you draw one or two cards each turn, add one or two to your route, and score for it if you’re ready to score. The fact that you must add at least one city to your route each turn or lose the whole route gives the game an enjoyable planning element.”